You do realize that if Liberty finally leaves Sam, the MRAs will be back in full force to call her a cold heartless bitch.

...Who are the MRAs?

Mens Right's Activists

Universally terrible for most of the same reasons feminism is terrible, plus a few (and minus many of the redeeming qualities)

also, a group that feminists like to hate on for various reasons, despite the "then go make your own movement" thing some of them throw out when it is said that feminism doesn't address a broad enough range of issues

also I guessing the timeline here is
1) I hit "quote" and started writing this response
2) the post I'm responding to had some stuff added to it
3) ShadowCell read it and responded to it
4) I hit post
5) I edited my poorly-stitched together half sentences (formed by changing my mind on how to word something halfway through) into something more coherrent
6) and now this
_________________________butts

Last edited by Heretical Rants on Sat Jul 27, 2013 7:45 pm; edited 2 times in total

You do realize that if Liberty finally leaves Sam, the MRAs will be back in full force to call her a cold heartless bitch.

...Who are the MRAs?

Mens Right's Activists

Universally terrible for most of the same reasons feminism is terrible, plus a few (and minus many of the redeeming qualities)

also, a group that feminists like to hate on for various reasons, despite the "then go make your own movement" thing some of them throw out when it is said that feminism doesn't address a broad enough range of issues

Uh, gonna have to pretty severely disagree that MRAs are somehow the gender-flipped version of feminists and that feminism just hates them for "various reasons". They are pretty damn good reasons, since the MRM (Men's Right's Movement) is largely reactionary and leans right-wing. For a vague general idea of what it is and whatnot, [url=http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Men's_rights_movement]this is a fairly good outline.[/url]

I mean, I know there's a lot of bad in feminism, but I've also seen a lot of good. I've seen transphobic radical feminists but I've also seen the work of tonnes of trans feminists doing good work and putting vague concepts I had in my head down in clear, concise posts. I've hardly seen any serious "man-hating" feminists, but even including the joke ones I've seen far more 101 posts explaining that feminism doesn't hate men, feminists discussing toxic masculinity and how it's harmful to everyone. Whereas MRAs... I don't think I've ever seen anything by an MRA that didn't involve some kind of misogyny or sexism.

Let's take something MRAs like to talk about, like child custody and alimony. Yes, women do indeed get primary custody more so than men, that is an inequality that hopefully will lessen in the future. I'm not sure if this is an actual feminist website or what, maybe it's just a semi-personal one run by a woman, but here's an alright breakdown of things http://www.villainouscompany.com/vcblog/archives/2012/04/child_supportcu.html
Now, let's have a look at some of the articles on it from well known men's rights group A Voice For Men
[Edit: This barely ended up being about child support, but I still ended up addressing issues that MRAs talk about]
I don't know why this was in the child support tag, but it was: Rape Culture: Female Scam, Male Nightmare

Quote:

Rape culture is a term used within women’s studies and feminism, describing a culture in which rape and other sexual violence against women is common and in which prevalent attitudes, norms, practices, and media condone, normalize, excuse, or encourage sexualized violence.

That is just one of the definitions for rape culture I found online. It is as good a definition as any for something that does not, and never has, existed. And it has been taking its rightful place alongside a nonexistent gender wage gap, nonexistent employment discrimination, nonexistent media bias and a nonexistent domestic violence crisis that only affects women, continuing the litany of nonexistent feminist outrages.

This collection of imagined slights and hurts form the basis of Lie Culture. And it is nothing new. We have been lying to women since the first one asked, “Does this mastodon hide make my ass look fat?” Rather we have been lying to women since the first one started crying and getting cold in the bedroom when being told the truth. And that trump card, issued in the name of survival biology, has long ensured that for the most part, women will not be inconvenienced with reality. And nor will men who want to remain on their “good” side.

So after going on about feminists and how just so many men are affected by false rape accusations (in reality the false accusation rate is around the same as for other crimes) then got mad at a guy at a guy advocating for men ending rape saying

Paul Elam wrote:

Just ask Keith Edwards, feminist blowhard and Indoctrinator-in-Chief at Hamilton College. He has developed a new program for all freshman males (read: rapists), who attend that school. It’s a class called “She Fears You.” The intent of this program is to combat rape culture, by branding innocent students, all male, as sexual deviates in waiting, and treating them that way from the first day they attend school at that institution. Edwards is hell bent on proving to young men how unambiguously dangerous they really are. All men are potential rapists, and Edwards is going to by God set them straight.

Oh, and according to the good professor, they are also racists and homophobes, a couple of bonus pejoratives he tossed in for good measure. Perhaps it was to give his reeducation camp a well rounded effect, or maybe to cover what few men attend that aren’t actually rapists. Hell, they’re men, there has to be something wrong with them, right?

This is in response to a guy, Keith E. Edwards, who has been doing actual work on college campuses to prevent rape, challenging hegemonic masculinity and homophobia, all of the things which actually could be described as actual men's issues. Go read Edwards' stuff if you want, he has a blog. If the "Men's Rights Activist" label hadn't been so thoroughly corrupted by the current MRAs, he would probably be one. And yet this is what Paul Elam has to say about him:

Paul Elam wrote:

Obviously this is a political operation, and one that seeks to invade and destroy the very consciousness of any man that chooses to get his education at Hamilton. Despite objections from students, many of the faculty, the Hamilton Alumni organization, and other concerned groups, the elite powers to be at that institution backed the crusading Edwards, and pressed forward with the class- even sending out threatening emails to male students, warning them, in bold red letters, that the event was mandatory.

It is hard to fight off the knee jerk reaction to grab Edwards by the scruff of his neck and give him an earful of reality, like the fact that only a microscopic fraction of men are rapists. Even better, one might press him to answer, if such alarm is warranted from the mere presence of males in the university setting, then where were the equally strident warnings that should have gone out to all the female students and their parents? Why are they not being warned about the dangerous “rape culture” that awaits them in the school they have chosen to attend? I mean, shouldn’t women be damned afraid to attend Hamilton?

Did you see anything, anywhere where Edwards was implying that all or most men were rapists? Notice how the point of everything Edwards says or writes makes a little whooshing noise as it flies over Elam's head.

Now in the following paragraphs, under all the bullshit, Elam does actually have a point about female-on-male molestation. Note that the site that he links as evidence for an "epidemic" of female teachers sexually abusing students is sort of odd in that it mostly seems to create articles which are links to other news sites, but I [url="http://www.wnd.com/2013/07/separation-nonsense-from-the-lying-secularists/"]found one that was actually written there originally[/url] which claims that the Freedom From Religion foundation is an "Anti-Christian extremist group" and "hate God". And to quote some more:

Quote:

These “progressive” outfits – along with like-minded politicos, judges, Hollywood elitists and left-wing media-types – hate that this great nation was expressly founded upon the bedrock precepts of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

And so, in response, they lash out. They endeavor first to raze our God-blessed America, and then raise, from the rubble, a godless America fashioned in their own secular-socialist self-image.

Yeah, not exactly what I'd call a reputable source.

Also, not all of those cases were of a female teacher abusing a male student anyway, yet that gets no mention in Elam's article, nor does he even think to look up statistics of male teacher's abuse. Actually, the other thing wasn't even a statistic, just cases. I've been trying to find actual statistics and it's pretty damn difficult, but I did find a thing by a feminist website that actually does have some stats on peer-on-peer sexual harassment and oh my god, mentions boys too! Paul Elam may want to get a fainting couch or something, so surprised that the "feminazis" care. (Haha just kidding, he'd probably say the whole thing was misandrist, for reasons.)
Anyway, basically it's damn hard to find statistics for teacher-on-student abuse, but I managed to find out from [url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teacher#Misconduct"]here[/url] that the American Association of University Women reported that 9.6% of students in the United States claim to have received unwanted sexual attention from an adult associated with education; be they a volunteer, bus driver, teacher, administrator or other adult; sometime during their educational career. Then there's another report here where it says 38% have seen teachers and other school employees
sexually harassing students.
Anyway, back to Paul Elam, it irritates me because as I said he does have points, but then just manages to go about it the worst way possible. It's like the argumental equivalent of tripping over a crack in the sidewalk and blaming the Illuminati instead of whoever's in charge of keeping sidewalks safe (probably the local government). We both want the crack fixed but then when I say I don't think the Illuminati is behind it and no I won't be joining him in setting fire to the "warehouse capital" downtown, I'll probably just contact our local representative, he starts accusing me of purposely cracking the sidewalk and being a part of the Illuminati and that I want to make his life miserable and am not helping at all.
I just really do not feel like going through the rest of his post right now (or ever, really) so in lieu of finishing I'm just going to link to Manboobz where there are archives of all of the misogynistic goodness carefully collated and sometimes even amusingly snarked at.

Your phrasing really did make it sound like the whole MRA thing was only slightly more bad than an also-bad feminism.

Now, I know that folks like stripey and me are all on board with discussing (and hopefully fixing!) the problematic elements of feminism, so I'm not saying it's perfect or free from harmful flaws, (though the actual flaws I'm aware of are rarely, if EVER, the ones that your bog-standard straw-feminist demonizers like to trot out to keep the wimmins in their place, or divide and conquer.)

However, to compare the two with any approximation of equivalence is, among other things, to ignore the fact that feminism has and does push to change society in ways that actually make positive differences, whereas the MRA movement's big "wins" are giving troglodytes on the internet a place to whine at each other about women, and prey on individual men's struggles with family courts in order to bolster the us-vs-them stance that defines them, and to train up and reinforce entitled and domineering abusers and users of women, LGBTQ*, and pretty much anyone else who isn't in their insane little cult-of-masculinity hotboxing club.

They do not fight for men's rights, as a broad term. It's not just that they're doing it badly; that's not even their real goal. The care about defending The Patriarchy and masculine privilege, even if that also hurts actual men. (The men it hurts just aren't the right kind of man, or aren't being man enough, or it's really feminism's fault or some such drek.)

Feminism and MRA are not mirror images of each other, with one just having a few more warts. There are elements who fly the feminism banner that do act like mirrors of the MRAs, but that's comparing the warty hand of one to the almost entirely wart-comprised-and-encrusted body of the other.

Last edited by Rune on Sat Jul 27, 2013 9:27 pm; edited 1 time in total

Feminism is a broad movement with good ideas and some problem spots that many within want to work out. MRAs are a problem with no redeeming social positions. Even when they get something right, like how men are also victims of rape, they approach it from a position of using male victimization to try and silence discussion of female victimization._________________"Worse comes to worst, my people come first, but my tribe lives on every country on earth. I’ll do anything to protect them from hurt, the human race is what I serve." - Baba Brinkman

Although, I don't think I made my post sound like was defending that conglomerate of scumbags and idiots, so I'm not sure what you're trying to demonstrate to me with that.

I don't know what you had before on your post (Wish I'd quoted it), but last night when I read it, I recall it being something like, "Feminists are just like MRAs, which make them hating MRAs just weird and stupid."

Anyway, not too long ago in the Feminism 101 thread, you wrote this:

Heretical Rants wrote:

The difference between women's advocacy (I think that's the right term for the thing I'm okay with and sometimes actively support?) and feminism (the thing that carries some of the most evil of idealogical baggage) just hit me like a bag of bricks again.

blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh

And I was wondering what made you think there was a difference between these two, and why you don't like feminism. Because you don't, right? That's what I get from that post, and also the thing you said here.

I am trying to figure out where you are coming from and what you mean.

Now, I know that folks like stripey and me are all on board with discussing (and hopefully fixing!) the problematic elements of feminism, so I'm not saying it's perfect or free from harmful flaws, (though the actual flaws I'm aware of are rarely, if EVER, the ones that your bog-standard straw-feminist demonizers like to trot out to keep the wimmins in their place, or divide and conquer.)

Omg I have so many complaints about the current state of feminism. But we won't be getting around to those here, most likely, without getting derailed by MRA 101. It doesn't make me as mad as how misogynistic, racist and classist a lot of skeptical atheists are, since I trusted them to be reasonable about all things.

Feminists that I have known have been some of the most vitriolic, anti-queer, racist people I've ever met. I recognize that there is a difference between people who think like them and feminism itself. And their views are far too prevalent but I hope to help those views die out as quickly as possible.

I support anyone who is actually fixing problems that disproportionately face men, but not when they are claiming that a conspiracy exists trying to take rights from men to give them to women. Kind of like how I support unemployed people, but not the people who claim whites are unemployed because non-whites took their jobs. That kind of bullshit is problematic, helps no one, and is aimed at harming people who are much less politically powerful than the group complaining._________________[Stripeypants has enabled lurk mode.]